Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtualised?

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Nano
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Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2020 11:11 pm

Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtualised?

Post by Nano »

Last week i tested the latest official release of ReactOS and the latest nightly build in a kvm-qemu vm.

And the thing that was really annoying was, that ReactOS did not ship with open source drivers for hardware that is default in typical virtual machines.
Besides the problem, that installing the suggested open source drivers for the virtualized soundcard that qemu offers didn't work.
It's also a big showstopper and bad user experience if the user has to install all that extra drivers.

The hardware that is virtualised by virtual machines like Virtualbox, Qemu or VMWare do usually not change much.
It's always the same. There is no big change in hardware configurations on VM.
So why not just ship ReactOS with open source drivers for that specific hardware by default when open source drivers are available?

In the case of Qemu it also shouldn't be a big problem to ship ReactOS with Qemu's guest additions by default. Like all the spice stuff.
https://www.spice-space.org/download.html
They are usually open source too.

If reactOS were delivered with these drivers by default, all of the hardware offered by the virtual machines would work out of the box and thus ensure a better user experience.
With a better user experience ReactOS will get more acceptance and as of today most users will test and use ReactOS inside virtual machines anyway and not on real hardware. So why should the user experience be worse?
Even Windows is shipping with a bunch of drivers.
learn_more
Developer
Posts: 246
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 10:00 pm

Re: Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtuali

Post by learn_more »

Nano wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2020 11:31 pm Last week i tested the latest official release of ReactOS and the latest nightly build in a kvm-qemu vm.

And the thing that was really annoying was, that ReactOS did not ship with open source drivers for hardware that is default in typical virtual machines.
Besides the problem, that installing the suggested open source drivers for the virtualized soundcard that qemu offers didn't work.
It's also a big showstopper and bad user experience if the user has to install all that extra drivers.

The hardware that is virtualised by virtual machines like Virtualbox, Qemu or VMWare do usually not change much.
It's always the same. There is no big change in hardware configurations on VM.
So why not just ship ReactOS with open source drivers for that specific hardware by default when open source drivers are available?

In the case of Qemu it also shouldn't be a big problem to ship ReactOS with Qemu's guest additions by default. Like all the spice stuff.
https://www.spice-space.org/download.html
They are usually open source too.

If reactOS were delivered with these drivers by default, all of the hardware offered by the virtual machines would work out of the box and thus ensure a better user experience.
With a better user experience ReactOS will get more acceptance and as of today most users will test and use ReactOS inside virtual machines anyway and not on real hardware. So why should the user experience be worse?
Even Windows is shipping with a bunch of drivers.
ReactOS ships with drivers that are default in typical virtual machines,
it works fine on VMWare and Virtualbox.

Maybe your definition of 'typical virtual machines' differs?
Either way, feel free to submit open source drivers for kvm-qemu.
Nano
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2020 11:11 pm

Re: Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtuali

Post by Nano »

kvm-qemu does virtualize a simple AC97 soundcard.
High Definition Audio with virtualization of Intel ICH6 and ICH9 soundchip is also supported.

But ReactOS doesn't support any of them out of the box.

According to your wiki there are free open source drivers for AC97 available, but your wiki says, the user should download and install them. They are not shipped with ReactOS, which is the problem. The other problem is, that installation does fail btw.
https://reactos.org/wiki/QEMU#Setting_up_Sound

As an alternative your ReactOS wiki says that ES1370 emulation that qemu seems to support too, but isn't an option in the Virtual Machine Manager GUI, will work too. But the user should, according to your wiki, write an registry import file.

Both are big showstoppers, the first even doesn't work.
And this could easily circumented, if ReactOS would ship with these drivers.

Also keep in mind. Virtualbox isn't used anymore on most Linux distributions that depend on Debian. That's the biggest installation base, because Ubuntu und Linux Mint both depend on Debian.
Debian removed the virtalbox package because of bad support and unfixed bugs. And because there is no more a need for virtualbox, because kvm + qemu + virtual machine manager can do a much better job and is better supported on Linux.

Thus virtualbox is a Windows only thing today.
And VMWare cost's money and is therefore used by much less people in their private time.


So to sum it up.
The user experience can be improved a lot, with less hassle for kvm-qemu users.
The only thing that ReactOS needs for this is to ship with drivers for emulated qemu hardware out of the box.
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irony
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 4:17 pm

Re: Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtuali

Post by irony »

qemu sucks compared to VBox/VMWare, so your free advertisement of qemu hardly will make effect. and how, the fact debian removed VBox is related to the choice of what VM software ReactOS supports in the first place? I can respond to your argument, that most people use Windows (and VBox/VMWare for ReactOS testing) and give nothing about what debian or whatever removed. how is that to you? also, you are lying a little, because there is free VMWare. :) but the most important thing is in here, let me second it yet once, it's obviously slipped out of your eyes:
Either way, feel free to submit open source drivers for kvm-qemu.
if you feel so excited about qemu, help it, instead of this noisy insisting on other people taking your visions as the truth!
Nano
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2020 11:11 pm

Re: Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtuali

Post by Nano »

irony wrote: Fri Nov 06, 2020 12:08 am childish behavior
I am not going into your childish behavior, you need to grow up. But i am going to correct you at technical points:

qemu sucks compared to VBox/VMWare,
You obviously have no clue about what you're talking about.
kvm is in the kernel, VBox is not.

Thus kvm-qemu is MUCH faster. Here's the benchmark:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... -kvm&num=1

And vbox support is quite poor compared to kvm:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgrepo ... t=unstable

how the hell, the fact debian removed VBox is related to the choice of what VM software ReactOS supports in the first place?
It's not my problem if you don't see it. You obviously don't want to have more developers for ReactOS.
And yes, this is related because for ReactOS you need a special kind of developers.
Developers that see the importance of Free Software.

In the world of windows there are not a lot of developers who care about a free clone of Windows, they already have their proprietary Windows.
This is different in the world of free software operating system users that use FreeBSD, Linux and others.
So your rant against kvm-qemu is just foolish, because if you want more deverlopers for ReactOS the smart people would make ReactOS a good experience on virtual machine software that are used in the free software world. And kvm-qemu has more users in this world.

but the most important thing is in here, let me second it yet once, it's obviously slipped out of your eyes:
And that makes you look much more stupid.
Because i already have read this message, but this doesn't change the good reason of this topic.
MadWolf
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Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 4:19 am
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Re: Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtuali

Post by MadWolf »

hi
Nano wrote: Thu Nov 05, 2020 5:08 pmAlso keep in mind. Virtualbox isn't used anymore on most Linux distributions that depend on Debian. That's the biggest installation base, because Ubuntu und Linux Mint both depend on Debian.
I dual-boot Windows 8.1 and Linux Mint I do not have any problems installing Virtualbox Debian removing Virtualbox from the repository is not a problem you can get the install deb form the Virtualbox home page
Nano wrote: Thu Nov 05, 2020 5:08 pm VMWare cost's money and is therefore used by much less people in their private time.
no there is VMware Workstation Player
VMware Workstation Player


VMware Workstation Player is an ideal utility for running a single virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC. Organizations use Workstation Player to deliver managed corporate desktops, while students and educators use it for learning and training.


The free version is available for non-commercial, personal and home use. We also encourage students and non-profit organizations to benefit from this offering.


Commercial organizations require commercial licenses to use Workstation Player.
to get audio working you can get the driver form rapps the driver is in a self-extracting archive
Extract to: c:\reactos
shunesburg
Posts: 215
Joined: Wed Feb 21, 2018 3:46 pm
Location: Somewhere in France

Re: Making ReactOS a better experience in VM. Could you ship ReactOS with hardware drivers for hardware that is virtuali

Post by shunesburg »

"It sucks"... :o "My software is better"... :roll: "I have a bigger than you" ... :lol:

Why this mess. The question is simple : "Why the Qemu drivers are not implement out of the Box?"

I answer you nicely:

Because nobody have submit it in the project. If you want, you can commit the driver sources to the project. If you don't want or don't know how to do it, you have just to hope or to wait a nice guy make it for you.
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